Browsing by Subject "Social isolation"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Death, Isolation, and Culture: Testing the Validities of Terror Management Theory and Coalitional Psychology
    (2006) Ing, Jennifer; Le, Benjamin; Sternberg, Wendy
    Two empirical studies attempted 1) to compare the validities of terror management theory and coalitional psychology, 2) to extend past research on cultural influences on cognition, and 3) to examine the effects of mortality and social isolation salience on cognition. Experiment 1 examined the effects of cultural (collectivism or individualism) priming and salience (mortality, social isolation, or neutral) priming on performance on a field-dependence task and a causal attribution task. The results revealed no significant effects for the field-dependence task but a significant cultural priming effect on the attribution task. Experiment 2 examined the effects of cultural priming and salience priming on mortality, social isolation, or fear-thought accessibility as measured through a word completion task. The only significant effect that emerged was one of salience priming in which the neutral salience condition showed a greater accessibility for social isolation words. The implications of these results for both past and future research are discussed.
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    Exploring the Effects of Social Isolation on Novel Object Recognition (NOR) in Danio rerio
    (2024) Ishwar, Arushi; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese
    Social isolation can negatively impact learning and memory systems. In zebrafish, novel object recognition (NOR) paradigms are often used to understand recognition memory capabilities. Zebrafish are known to be social animals, who are negatively affected when isolated. The present study aimed to address the effects of social isolation on the NOR task in zebrafish models. We used color as the novel characteristic to test NOR in socially isolated (ISO) versus socially stimulated (SOC) zebrafish with retention periods of two-hours and five-minutes. Results showed no novelty preferences or familiarity preferences in either group of zebrafish, social or isolated, for either retention period. Overall, discrimination ratios were not significantly different from chance levels. Future research will focus on reducing the potential stressors in this study that may have interfered with the NOR ability of zebrafish.
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    Inclusion/Exclusion Model Applied to Facial Stereotypes
    (1999) Greer, Christine E.; Perloe, Sidney
    This study investigates the effects of facial stereotypes on subjects' judgments of a target person using Schwarz and Bless's inclusion/exclusion model (1992). This model states that the inclusion of a contextual stimulus in a target category results in assimilation toward the contextual stimulus and that the exclusion of a stimulus from a target category yields contrast away from the contextual stimulus. Subjects were presented with three ambiguous behavior descriptions each paired with either a baby, mature, or neutral-faced target female. Subjects then were asked to judge the target female along certain personality-trait dimensions relevant to the facial stereotypes. The hypothesis for this study was that by including the female target's behavior as part of her personality, assimilation to the facial stereotype would occur, and that by excluding the target's behavior from her personality, contrast against the facial stereotype would result. Our results did not show significant effects that supported this hypothesis; however we did find significant main effects for face type and story condition.
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    Lost in Transition: Exploring How Social Status and Gender Moderate the Relationship Between Adolescent Loneliness and Class Based Identity Uncertainty
    (2024) Guberman, Meghan; Lei, Ryan
    As middle schoolers compare themselves to their peers and build their sense of self, they develop Class-Based Identity. Adolescent identity may be shaped by a sense of loneliness and moderated by gender and Subjective Social Status. The present study (N=183) aims to replicate and extend work on how aspects of identity moderate the relationship between Class-Based Identity Uncertainty and well-being variables. Adolescents entering seventh grade completed validated self-report scales on the above variables. Loneliness predicted Class-Based Identity Uncertainty and both loneliness and Class-Based Identity Uncertainty were correlated with poor mental health outcomes. Neither gender nor subjective social status moderated the relationship between loneliness and Class-Based Identity Uncertainty. Implications for these results are discussed.
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    The Effects of Mortality Salience and Social Isolation Salience on Individualistic and Collectivistic Cognition
    (2006) Polykoff, Jason
    Terror management theory asserts that humans have an inherent fear of dying, and when their death is made salient (mortality salience) they cling to their worldviews as a means to mitigate their fear. Coalitional psychology’s claims diverge from this assumption, stating that it is not individuals’ thoughts of death that cause them to attach to their worldviews, but instead, it is thoughts of being socially alone (social isolation salience). A study testing this assertion found no significant difference in thought accessibility between mortality salience and social isolation salience. Additionally, studies using cognitive tasks found that individuals from separate cultures (individualistic and collectivistic) think differently. The present study compared terror management theory claims and coalitional psychology claims on individualistic and collectivistic cognition. In Study 1, thought accessibility was examined using a word-completion task after participants were primed with individualistic or collectivistic thought, followed by mortality salience, social isolation salience, or neutral salience. In Study 2, participants completed two cognitive tasks, the Embedded Figures Task and the Self-Attribution Task, after being primed with the same saliencies as the first study. Results from both studies produced no relevant significant findings. The potential confounds of the study’s design and ideas for future research are discussed.